For me, one of the funniest sights in India was familes arriving by bus to just put on golashes/wellingtons to walk in the snow at the foot of the Rhotang Pass in Kulu/Himachal. I saw one family unfold a card table and chairs in the middle of a creek resulting from the run-off and pull out a picnic lunch. Another funny thing at that pass: As I hiked over it, I met the Indian national ski team: Two guys in a tent, no coach. They'd ski down as far as they could without running into the four or five meter-deep trench of the road, which the plows were digging it out for the spring. Then they'd take off their skis and hike back up in their boots to do it again. They said it was good exercise, and I believe it, although I don't know that respiratory fitness is such a factor in downhill skiing.
Ya, it is a big thing for us, the snow. I remember it once snowing very lightly for approximately two minutes in my home town and we talked about it for years. Although there are places where is snows heavily, majority of india has never seen snow, and there are places in the south which have never seen winter.
I'm sure an American growing up poor in Alabama is liable to get excited by the first time he or she sees snow, if indeed they ever do except for on TV. I think I was five when my mom took me to a nearby hill to see the unusual dusting of snow. It's an American cliche that kids get excited the first time they encounter snow. But for middle class Americans of a certain age, I imagine typically that will have happened as a kid--what with the prevalence of car ownership, holiday and business travel and moving around the country for careers. I think partly the humor in the Indian tourists to me was the irony that at the time I was thinking "Here I am in the rugged hinterlands of nowhere preparing to walk across a pass of the fabled Himalayas in the exotic far east."
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For me, one of the funniest sights in India was familes arriving by bus to just put on golashes/wellingtons to walk in the snow at the foot of the Rhotang Pass in Kulu/Himachal. I saw one family unfold a card table and chairs in the middle of a creek resulting from the run-off and pull out a picnic lunch. Another funny thing at that pass: As I hiked over it, I met the Indian national ski team: Two guys in a tent, no coach. They'd ski down as far as they could without running into the four or five meter-deep trench of the road, which the plows were digging it out for the spring. Then they'd take off their skis and hike back up in their boots to do it again. They said it was good exercise, and I believe it, although I don't know that respiratory fitness is such a factor in downhill skiing.
Ya, it is a big thing for us, the snow. I remember it once snowing very lightly for approximately two minutes in my home town and we talked about it for years. Although there are places where is snows heavily, majority of india has never seen snow, and there are places in the south which have never seen winter.
I'm sure an American growing up poor in Alabama is liable to get excited by the first time he or she sees snow, if indeed they ever do except for on TV. I think I was five when my mom took me to a nearby hill to see the unusual dusting of snow. It's an American cliche that kids get excited the first time they encounter snow. But for middle class Americans of a certain age, I imagine typically that will have happened as a kid--what with the prevalence of car ownership, holiday and business travel and moving around the country for careers. I think partly the humor in the Indian tourists to me was the irony that at the time I was thinking "Here I am in the rugged hinterlands of nowhere preparing to walk across a pass of the fabled Himalayas in the exotic far east."
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